smiled just as though she knew what her son was saying; proud of his high
learning, she was. He could talk with the Americanos, and they listened
with respect. Their language he could speak, better than they could speak
it themselves. Did she not know? She herself could now and then
understand what he was talking about, he spoke so plainly.

"You've got new neighbors, I see," Starr observed irrelevantly, when
Estan paused to relight his cigarette. "Over at Johnny Calvert's," he
added, when Estan looked at him inquiringly.

"Oh-h, yes! That poor boy and girl! You seen them?"

"I just came from there," Starr informed him easily. "What brought them
away out here?"

"They not tell, then? That man Calvert, he's a bad one, sure! He don'
stay no more--too lazy, I think, to watch his sheeps from the coyotes,
and says they're stole. He comes here telling me I got his sheeps--yes.
We quarrel a little bit, maybe. I don' like to be called thief, you bet.
He's big mouth, that feller--no brains, aitre. Then he goes some_where_,
and he tells what fine rancho he's got in Sunlight Basin. These boy and
girl, they buy. That's too bad. They don' belong on these desert, sure.
W'at they know about hard life? Pretty soon they get tired, I think, and
go back where comes from. That boy--what for help he be to that girl?
Jus' boy--not so old my brother Luis. Can't ride horse; goes up and down,
up an' down like he's back goes through he's hat. What that girl do? Jus'
slim, big-eye girl with soft hand and sickness of lungs. Babes, them boy
and girl. Whan Calvert he should be shot dead for let such inocentes be
fool like that."